Category

Marriage

I have been a military spouse for over 12 years. We’ve had our fair share of separations; training operations, field exercises, MEU’s, one actual deployment, and years of working 18 to 20 hour days. Several trainings took him away for months at a time, and various schoolings that we had to live apart for. We know separation, we know the stress that comes with it. I am here to take you on a 9 month journey through deployment and back.

Let’s Start Here….

Being married to a Marine, isn’t glamorous like the movies make it out to be. It’s hard, it sucks sometimes…ok a lot of the time. It’s long hours for my Marine with back breaking hard work. It’s raising kids alone, sleeping alone, vacationing alone, family outings alone….IT’S LONELY.

As we prepare for our 2nd big deployment that we’ve known about for months, the stress has started to grow. The buildup of him leaving, or WHEN WILL HE LEAVE? “CAN YOU JUST LEAVE SO YOU CAN COME HOME? ” becomes unbearable. It starts to become the only thought on the brain. He’s leaving, oh we can’t do this or that, My Marine will be gone…. missing holidays, anniversaries & birthdays, milestones in the kids lives. The kids and I make special plans for when he’s gone and we try to focus on those plans, count the days, to distract us from the fact that “ya, he’s gone again….”

Hubby is supposed to leave this fall. When you may ask? Ha! I don’t know. Yet behold, last week he had a last minute trip to Japan for a week. Yes, we found out Wednesday he was leaving Saturday. And yesterday, after he had been home for 2 whole days, we learned that on Thursday he will be leaving again, this time for 2 weeks.

We tried to rearrange the summer and fall plans so that he can be here, but now, he’s not. I just have to try to remember that it is important to plan life as if he is not here. Waiting around and trying to plan things to include him while he still is technically “here” is pointless.

I have done this before. I have friends who are currently living this life. I know what to expect, and yet, it doesn’t help at all!